Post
Why 'make it fun' is the most useless design advice ever given.
Here's the paradox: fun is the entire point of most games, yet it's nearly impossible to define, measure, or design for directly. Is Dark Souls fun? It's punishing, frustrating, and frequently unfair -- but millions of players love it. Is a spreadsheet fun? Not usually, but EVE Online is basically Excel in space and it has a fanatical playerbase. Fun is subjective, contextual, and emergent. Designers who chase 'fun' directly usually end up with generic, focus-tested mush. The best designers target specific emotions -- tension, curiosity, mastery, surprise -- and trust that fun emerges from the mix.
Example
Papers, Please has you stamping passports at a border checkpoint, dealing with bureaucratic rules and moral dilemmas. It's stressful, morally uncomfortable, and mechanically repetitive. Nobody would call it 'fun' in the traditional sense, yet it won countless awards because it targets specific emotions with surgical precision. Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is explicitly designed to be frustrating -- and that's what makes it compelling.
Why it matters
If you're designing games and your north star is just 'fun,' you'll design something forgettable. The games people remember are the ones that made them feel something specific, whether that's power, dread, wonder, or even frustration. Understanding the fun paradox liberates designers to pursue riskier, more interesting emotional targets.
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